Presentations included a summary of the study design and findings, as well as formal responses from Dr. Shu-Hong Zhu(University of California San Diego)and Dr. Bruce Baskerville(University of Waterloo). Strengths and weaknesses of the study, as well as implications for quitlines in a North American context were discussed.

Date: March 8, 2012 Title: Improving Adherence to Web-Based Cessation Programs: A Social Network ApproachSpeaker:Amanda L. Graham, PhD, is Director, Research Development of the Schroeder Institute for Tobacco Research and Policy Studies at Legacy®Slides: please click hereCall recording: click hereQ&A: click hereDescription: Practical counseling, social support, and nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) are components of tobacco dependence treatment that increase the chances of cessation. Web-based interventions are a promising delivery channel for tobacco dependence treatment. Although millions of smokers use the Internet for cessation assistance each year, most users engage only minimally with even the best designed cessation websites, diminishing their impact due to limited exposure/use of effective treatment components (an insufficient "dose”). The goal of this study is to compare the effectiveness of two approaches to improve adherence to the elements of tobacco dependence treatment delivered via the Internet. Addressing adherence to Internet cessation programs is critical and timely to leverage the potential public health impact of this "broad reach” treatment modality. The proposed study is unconventional and innovative in its use of a social network intervention approach to improve both behavioral and pharmacological treatment adherence to enhance cessation outcomes.Speaker Bio: Amanda L. Graham, PhD, is Director, Research Development of the Schroeder Institute for Tobacco Research and Policy Studies at Legacy®. Dr. Graham also holds an appointment as Associate Professor (Adjunct) in the Department of Oncology at Georgetown University Medical Center and is a member of the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Graham’s research interests are in understanding and increasing consumer demand for evidence-based cessation treatment interventions, particularly among smokers who might not otherwise access treatment. She has expertise in dissemination and implementation research as well as the development, implementation, and evaluation of tobacco dependence treatments across various modalities, including Internet, telephone, and tailored print.

»back to topDate: February 9, 2012Title: Incorporating Social Media Technologies into Cessation ServicesSpeakers: Jack Boomer, QuitNow Services Director, BC Lung Association and Frankie Best, Manager, Tobacco Control Program, British Columbia Ministry of HealthSlides: please click hereCall recording: please click hereQ&A: please click here Description: QuitNow Services, British Columbia’s provincial cessation services, funded by the Ministry of Health and managed by the BC Lung Association. QuitNow Services include telephone, on-line, text and email support to people who want to quit smoking as well as tools and resources for family and friends of quitters and also tools, resources and videos to educate healthcare professionals. Since 2008, QuitNow Services has dabbled in social media and learned many lessons along the way. With over 2100 members on the facebook page (www.facebook.com/quitnowbc) and over 600 followers on twitter (www.twitter.com/quitnowbc), we continue to seek ways to exploit our social media resources.As of September 30, 2011, British Columbian’s who smoke may call their HealthLine to receive up to twelve weeks of free patch and gum. All callers are referred and encouraged to use Quitnow Services. There has been a tremendous year over year increase in calls to QuitNow By Phone. The 14 week text messaging program, launched in January 2011, adds to the compliment of cessation services.In early September, 2011, QuitNow Services launched an enrolment database to helps better understand who enrolls in its services. Real time reporting on who is accessing services will be available for program planning and decision making.Jack Boomer and Frankie Best will talk about the lessons they learned to incorporate social media into their suite of cessation services, experiences they have had to date, and the impact of social media. They will identify potential research opportunities that may be of interest to the quitline community.For more information about the services provided in this Province, visit: http://www.quitnow.ca/index.php or follow us on facebook (www.facebook.com/quitnowbc) or on twitter (www.twitter.com/quitnowbc).Speaker Bios: Jack Boomer, QuitNow Services Director, BC Lung AssociationJack has more than 12 years of tobacco control experience working on smoke-free initiatives with the Ministry of Health and Worksafe BC, the Heart and Stroke Foundation and the BC Lung Association. He has worked on tobacco control issues with other jurisdictions in Canada, with a primary focus on cessation. Frankie Best, Manager, Tobacco Control Program, British Columbia Ministry of Health Frankie has 18 years experience with the BC provincial government, the last 12 in public health. She believes in providing exceptional service to British Columbians and more recently has developed a new passion in Social Media, as a way of reaching key audiences.

Date: November 10, 2011Title: Weekly Patterns in Usage of Tobacco Quit LinesSpeaker: Morgan Johnson, MPH, Project Director, The Monday CampaignsSlides: to download the slides for the presentation, click hereCall recording: to download the audio recording from the presentation, click here Q&A: to download the questions and answers from the presentation, click hereDescription: Very little research has been conducted on the day-to-day fluctuations in health behaviors. For tobacco cessation in particular, insight into behavioral patterns may be valuable for determining how to optimally time interventions to reach the most people and sustain behavior change. New evidence suggests that there are consistent weekly cycles in usage of tobacco quit lines. Studying these cycles may help us streamline quit line programs by more efficiently allocating quit line resources at certain optimal times, as well as showing us when is the best time to promote these programs to capture the most tobacco users. This presentation will walk participants through the evidence for these weekly patterns and what the results contribute to our knowledge of quit lines and how to improve them.Speaker Bio: Morgan Johnson serves as a Project Director and analyst with The Monday Campaigns: an organization dedicated to promoting the beginning of the week as a key day for health promotion. As a public health practitioner, Morgan has worked on a wide variety of health topics, from obesity prevention to violence and emergency management. Prior to her work with The Monday Campaigns, Morgan served as the lead trainer for community-based data analysis and disaster response for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Before working with the city, she spent several years developing and implementing and evaluating public health mobile data collection networks in North Carolina for use in community assessments and disaster response.

Date: Thursday, September 8, 2011Title: Web-assisted Tobacco Interventions: Recent Research on Online Support for Smokers Trying to QuitSpeaker: Peter Selby MBBS, CCFP, MHSc, FASAM Clinical Director, Addictions Program Head, Nicotine Dependence Clinic, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health Associate Professor, Departments of Family and Community Medicine, Psychiatry and Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of TorontoSlides: to download the slides for the presentation, click hereCall recording: to download the audio recording from the presentation, click hereDescription: The delivery of smoking cessation intervention can be challenging in most practice settings. Several methods have been explored by our team as well as others in how best to engage practitioners to deliver smoking cessation intervention to their patients/clients, and also in how to reach smokers directly. Telephone-based mass distribution of cessation resources has a demonstrated ability to reach very large number of smokers, and has been implemented in both the United States and Canada. The utility of the internet also holds much promise in reaching large number of smokers. In North America about 80% of the population, 16 years of age and older, use the internet and about 80% of them have searched for information on health. We have implemented a study, where treatment-seeking smokers from across the province of Ontario were able to enroll via the study website to receive smoking cessation medication and counseling support. The participants were made aware of the provincial quitline and provided with resources developed by the quitline. In two other related studies, the online enrollment strategy was successfully coupled with pharmacist- and physician-led behavioral intervention. This presentation will present this innovative online enrollment strategy and outcomes related to reach and effectiveness of the intervention. The presentation will aim to demonstrate that web-based smoking cessation intervention approaches ensure wide reach and ease of recruitment with little to no decrease in effectiveness. The costs and staffing associated with this method are minimal and the method can be readily combined with services offered by the quitlines.Speaker Bio: Peter Selby MD. is the Clinical Director of the Addictions Program and Head of the Nicotine Dependence Clinic at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). He is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Family and Community Medicine, Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine and the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. He is the executive director and creator of the TEACH project - a continuing education certificate program in Applied Counseling for Health with a focus on smoking cessation, through the University of Toronto. Dr. Selby’s research, as a Principal Investigator at the Ontario Tobacco Research Unit, includes smoking cessation especially in smokers with co morbid conditions, and web-based interventions, and as a Principal Investigator of the STOP study, investigations include the effectiveness of NRT and medications in different types of intervention settings. He helped start the program for pregnant substance using women at St. Joseph’s Health Centre providing both addiction medicine and obstetric care. He continues his clinical research with pregnant women who use substances and is the PI of a knowledge translation program (PREGNETS) to increase the adoption of evidence-based interventions with pregnant smokers.

Date: Thursday, August 11, 2011Title: Asian Language Quitlines, A Multi-State or National Approach? Speaker: Shu-Hong Zhu, PhD, University of California, San DiegoSlides: to download the slides for the presentation, click hereCall Recording: to download the audio recording from the presentation, click hereQ&A: to download the questions and answers from the presentation, click hereDescription: Dr. Shu-Hong Zhu will present preliminary results and lessons learned from his ongoing Asian Language Quitline Study. The study is being conducted to examine the feasibility of providing Asian Language quitline services through a central service provider, the University of California San Diego. UCSD and the California quitline have been providing quitline services in Korean, Vietnamese, Cantonese, and Mandarin to California smokers, and through this research study have been expanding the services they provide to other state quitlines. The presentation will focus on the process of setting up service provision to other state quitlines, and the outcomes they have observed to date. Lessons learned will also be discussed. Speaker Bio: Shu-Hong Zhu, Ph.D. is a Professor at the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, School of Medicine, University of California, San Diego and the Director of the UCSD Center for Research and Intervention in Tobacco Control (CRITC). Dr. Zhu’s research focuses mainly on smoking behavior and interventions for smoking cessation, with a bent towards population-based studies. He has been the Principal Investigator for the California Smokers’ Helpline since its inception in 1992. The Helpline is internationally recognized for its scientific innovation and its dedication to the dissemination of research findings to public health services. A psychologist with a strong background in methodology, Dr. Zhu has published on behavioral intervention as well as experimental design. He has won many awards, including the 2010 Beverlee Myers Award for Outstanding Leadership and Accomplishments in Public Health and the 2010 APHA Excellence Award from the American Public Health Association. He consults widely with various health and governmental agencies, has been a consultant for the WHO and the World Bank on Tobacco Control Initiatives in the Western Pacific Region, and has worked extensively with Asian colleagues on designing, implementing, and evaluating tobacco control efforts.

»back to topDate: Thursday, July 14, 2011Title: Report From a Recent Study: African American use of the California Smokers Helpline Speaker: Phil Gardiner, DrPH, Tobacco Related Disease Research Program Slides: to download the slides for the presentation, click hereCall Recording: to download the audio recording from the presentation, click hereQ&A: to download the Question & Answers from the presentation, click hereDescription: Phil Gardiner will present the results of a study comparing utilization rates of the California quitline by African-American smokers to those of white smokers. Eighteen years of quitline data were analyzed for the study, including over 61,000 African American and over 279,000 white smokers. The study found that within the context of California's comprehensive tobacco control program, which includes a strong media campaign, African-American smokers were significantly more likely to call the state quitline than white smokers. Dr. Gardiner will discuss the reasons for African Americans greater participation with the quitline and what additional efforts apart from the quitlines are necessary to lower African American smoking rates in California. Speaker Bio:Dr. Gardiner is a Public Health activist, administrator, evaluator and researcher. For the past 25 years, he has worked on studies ranging from Hypertension, Multiculturalism and AIDS, to Breast Cancer, Prostate Cancer, Diabetes and Smoking. Dr Gardiner received his Doctorate in Behavioral Sciences from the University of California at Berkeley, where he focused on Youth Violence as a public health issue. Through out his research career, Dr. Gardiner has maintained his community activism to address racial disparities in health, through writing, organizing, evaluating and public speaking. For the past 15 years, Dr. Gardiner has lectured around the country on African American health disparities generally and menthol smoking in the Black Community, particularly. Currently, Dr. Gardiner is the Social & Behavioral Sciences and Neurosciences and Nicotine Dependence Research Administrator for the Tobacco Related Disease Research Program (TRDRP), University of California Office of the President. Dr. Gardiner was a member of the national Steering Committee for National Conference on Tobacco Or Health in 2009 and was the national co-chair for the 2nd Conference on Mentholated Cigarettes which was held in Washington D.C. in October 2009. Dr. Gardiner is the co-editor of the Society for Nicotine and Tobacco special Journal Supplement that came out of the conference, Menthol Cigarettes: Toward a Broader Definition of Harm. Dr. Gardiner, along with Dr. Pamela Clark wrote the lead article for the above mentioned journal, making a strong case for the banning of mentholated cigarettes: http://ntr.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/ntq176? ijkey=g10fjZI5OeKdPz5&keytype=ref Dr. Gardiner is an adjunct faculty member at Touro University in Vallejo, a graduate medical college, where he teaches a course on Health Disparities. Dr. Gardiner is also the leader of an independent consultant firm, Gardiner & Associates, whose main evaluation work has centered on health disparities. And lastly, Dr. Gardiner is Co-Chair of the African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council (AATCLC), a group of Black professionals dedicated to fighting the scourge of tobacco impacting the African American community in California and Nationally.

Date: June 9, 2011Title: Using Telephone Quitlines to Treat Youth SmokersSpeaker: Art Peterson, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center Slides: to download the slides for the presentation, click hereCall Recording: to download the audio recording from the presentation, click hereDescription: Quitlines have a long-standing goal and interest in continuing to extend smoking cessation services to reach more smokers. An obstacle has been the limited scientific evidence for effectiveness of smoking cessation interventions specifically geared toward youth. Collaborating with 50 high schools, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center recently completed a large (n=2,151) long-term randomized trial to evaluate proactive telephone counseling (1) for reaching youth, and (2) for effecting cessation1,2. In this presentation, Art Peterson of the FHCRC will describe the trial and its results. The favorable results for both reach and effectiveness may present a possible new opportunity for quitlines to further extend quitline services to youth and young adults. (1) Peterson AV, Kealey KA, Mann SL, Marek PM, Ludman EJ, Liu J, Bricker JB. Group-Randomized Trial of a Proactive, Personalized Telephone Counseling Intervention for Adolescent Smoking Cessation. Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 2009;101(20), 1378-1392. (2) Kealey KA, Ludman EJ, Marek PM, Mann SL, Bricker JB, Peterson AV. Design and Implementation of an Effective Telephone Counseling Intervention for Adolescent Smoking Cessation. Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 2009;101(20), 1393-1405.Kealey KA, Ludman EJ, Mann SL, Marek PM, Phares MM, Riggs KR, Peterson AV Jr. Overcoming barriers to recruitment and retention in adolescent smoking cessation. Nicotine Tob Res. 2007;9(2):257-70. Speaker Bio: Arthur V. Peterson, Jr., Ph.D., Full Member, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Public Health Sciences Division, Cancer Prevention Research, and Professor of Biostatistics, University of Washington, has worked as a cancer prevention scientist, biostatistician, and professor at the Hutchinson Center and University of Washington since 1976. His experience includes the analysis of correlated endpoint data; the design, conduct, and analysis of group randomized trials. Dr. Peterson has a Ph.D. in Statistics from Stanford University. Dr. Peterson has served as Director and Biostatistician of two major long-term group-randomized trials in youth smoking prevention/cessation: the Hutchinson Smoking Prevention Project (1984-2000), and the Hutchinson Study of High School Smoking (2000-2009).

Date: May 12, 2011Title: Practical Challenges and Promising Strategies for Adapting MDS Intake Questions for In-Person Cessation Programs Speakers:Lija Greenseid and Anne Betzner, Professional Data Analysts Slides: to download the slides from the presentation, clickhereCall recording: to download the audio recording from the presentation, click hereDescription: Since the development of the Minimal Data Set for evaluating quitlines (MDS), tobacco control programs have wrestled with the question of whether, and how, to standardize intake and follow up questions across different types of cessation programs, such as in-person tobacco cessation counseling. Professional Data Analysts, Inc. is an independent evaluation firm currently working with five state quitlines to conduct their evaluations, and has been involved with the process of using the MDS for other types of cessation programs. Interestingly, the resistance from in-person programs (funders, staff, and other stakeholders) to embrace changing their intake processes and using MDS questions has been more of a challenge than the technical aspects of using the MDS for non-phone-based interventions. In this presentation, they will describe the challenges they have encountered and the strategies they have used to work with in-person programs to get MDS questions incorporated into their intake processes, such as modifying MDS questions to fit the local context and resources and working with funders and/or program staff to gain buy-in. They will also describe some of the technical aspects of the process (e.g., going from phone to paper intake administration). Speaker Bios: Lija Greenseid is a senior evaluator with Professional Data Analysts, Inc. She is the project manager for the evaluations of ClearWay Minnesota’s QUITPLAN Helpline telephone stop-smoking program, quitplan.com web program, and in-person cessation counseling program serving American Indians in the state. She also manages the evaluation of a statewide in-person cessation program sponsored by the Florida Department of Health. Anne Betzner is a Vice President of Professional Data Analysts, Inc. She manages evaluations of tobacco control programs for the states of Hawaii and Connecticut, both of which include quitlines and in-person cessation counseling programs. She also manages the evaluation of cessation media for the state of Florida.